Posts Tagged 'Carbon Trade'

A seemingly innocuous title maybe, but one that conceals a course of action that could signal the start of a trade war between the EU and the United States, at a time when Brussels is firefighting sovereign debt crises and staring down the barrel of the Euro disintegrating.

In a rare show of bi-partisan cooperation, the Republicans and Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed the Bill unanimously. It now goes before the Senate and if it passes there all that stands between it being rejected or becoming law is the signature of President Obama. Among the key paragraphs of the Bill are these two notable assertions used as justification for the US position:

(3) The European Union’s extraterritorial action is inconsistent with long-established international law and practice, including the Chicago Convention of 1944 and the Air Transport Agreement between the United States and the European Union and its member states, and directly infringes on the sovereignty of the United States.

(6) There is no assurance that ETS revenues will be used for aviation environmental purposes by the European Union member states that will collect them.

It is not just the US lining up against the EU on this matter. In the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) no less than 26 countries are opposed to the EU’s arbitrary measure.

After years of acting with impunity against the interests of the citizens of the member states, the EU now finds itself facing proper concerted opposition to its behaviour. This could become part of a snowball effect as Brussels comes under attack from multiple directions on multiple issues and add to a sense of crisis across the political class within the bloc. We are now living in what the Chinese call ‘interesting times’.

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As many readers will be aware Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is planning to impose a carbon tax in that country. She has faced some fierce criticism and challenges, not least from the conservative opposition Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott.

But Abbott won’t be thanking his supposedly conservative ally in the UK, David Cameron. For Cameron sent a letter to Gillard just over a week ago which has been shared with Sydney Morning Herald. The paper explains:

BRITAIN’S Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, has personally congratulated Julia Gillard on her carbon tax policy in a letter penned from the desk of 10 Downing Street.

The Herald goes on to quote from the letter:

“Your announcement sends a strong and clear signal that Australia is determined to make its contribution to addressing this challenge,” he said. “It will add momentum to those, in both the developed and developing world, who are serious about dealing with this urgent threat.”

Another snippet of the letter was shared by The Australian newspaper, which quotes Flip-Flop as saying:

I was delighted to hear of the ambitious package of climate change policy measures you announced on 10 July and wanted to congratulate you on taking this bold step.

Marvellous. No wonder the great carbon scam continues to press ahead in this country, it is endorsed from the top by a man with vested interests in the carbon trade.

This story will no doubt be music to the ears of Tory backbenchers and grassroots members who remain confident that Cameron is merely engaging in a strategic deception and will suddenly reveal his inner Tory any day now – as they have been saying since before the election. They will certainly be reassured by the Herald’s observation that Cameron is the second high-profile endorsement for Australian Labor’s carbon tax plans in less than a week, after former British Labour prime minister Tony Blair, in Australia for a series of corporate speaking events, said reducing carbon-fuel dependence was an “intelligent” move being adopted around the world, during a joint press conference with Ms Gillard.

So Cameron is truly the heir to Blair. Perhaps that is the only honest thing he has said in public.

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Here we go again, yet another personal intervention by David Cameron. We can but hope this intervention goes the same way as his previous efforts as this concerns the reduction of evil, poisonous carbon emissions.

David Cameron has moved to resolve a Cabinet row over the UK’s climate change targets, with an agreement on emissions to be announced on Tuesday.

This will see drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to 2027 and an overhaul of the way energy is produced.

The upshot of this is that our wallets and purses are going to raided, leaving us impoverished due to a plan to address something that remains unproven as a problem, in order to correct an issue the remains unproven as being of our making. But it makes the politicians feel better about themselves because they are seen to be ‘doing something’ and it keeps the ‘green extreme’ happy as this represents another step forward in their plan to de-industrialise the western world and reverse centuries of progress.

It should come as no surprise that joining our husky-hugging multi millionaire Prime Minister in this grand plan is the sopping wet hand wringer Oliver Letwin. But the stand out part of the article concerns born again Eurofanatic, William Hague, described by Harrabin thus:

Meanwhile Foreign Secretary William Hague put the case for strong carbon targets to keep up with countries like China in the move towards low-carbon energy, and to retain the UK’s international moral leadership on the issue.

If only we were trying to keep up with China, which is building a new coal fired power stations at an incredible rate and apparently deploying carbon capture technology, while here we suffer from the folly of wind farms producing barely 19% of installed capacity potential.

We need more power that is reliable, which the Chinese are finally delivering for their own people. But instead we are scaling back reliable power generation to appease green extremism. The cost to this country of the flawed policy agenda, built upon vested interests, will dwarf anything that has gone before.

But the political class presses ahead with their fingers in their ears, knowing that at least they can afford to pay the bills even if many of the rest of us consider turning off the heating when it is cold because of their inability to pay the rapidly rising prices – driven up by lunatic political decisions rather than the cost of the energy itself.

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Some people are confused by the media reports and alarmism about carbon dioxide, or CO2. They are left with the impression that CO2 is suffocating the earth and acting like a thick blanket warming the planet. So here’s some simple information about CO2 for those who want some basic facts. Please share it around.

As we can see in the diagram below (taken from the ARIC Atmosphere, Climate & Environment Information Programme website a DEFRA endorsed teaching resource for Key Stage 4 and A-Level students in the UK) the sources of carbon dioxide show that 95% of CO2 occurs naturally. There is nothing we can do about it.

Only roughly 5% is produced as a result of man’s activity. We know that for every 1,000,000 (one million) parts of atmosphere, around 385 are CO2 and this figure has increased as a result of CO2 being released from the oceans as they get warmer. The rest is made up of other gases and vapours. So based on the diagram below, anthropogenic (man made) CO2 emissions add up to just 19 parts per million parts of atmosphere.

Are we really to believe that the world faces catastrophe as a result of man being responsible for the existence of 0.0019% of a naturally occuring gas in the atmosphere, but that we can stave off disaster if we reduce that contribution to 0.0007%? Why are politicians not asking themselves questions like this before rushing to regulate and tax our behaviour? Could it be because this helps them to further another agenda?

Let’s look at the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere and man’s contribution in a graphical manner. Take the image below (it is quite a large file size). It consists of 1 million dots, each one representing a particle of atmosphere. Download it and increase its size until you can see the colouration in the top left corner. The green dots are naturally occuring CO2, the red dots (barely perceptible unless the image is fully enlarged) are human produced CO2 and the black dots are other gases and vapours.

Now think about the CO2 industry that has sprung up and all the billions of dollars, pounds, euros, etc that are being spent to reduce the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere by a trifling 10 or so parts per million. A mere ten or so dots in this image. Yet we are supposed to believe this will make a difference in global temperature of 2C or more, prevent drought, flooding, hurricanes, melting glaciers, receding rainforests and so on.

Is it any wonder so many people are not buying the global warming narrative any more? Following the last three bitterly cold winters is it any wonder trust in these people is evaporating as they – the warmists who predicted for years warmer and wetter winters were a sign of CO2 induced global warming – now say the opposite and claim that, actually, colder and more icy winters are evidence of warming?

By way of reinforcing the extent of anthropogenic emissions and putting this into context with the atmosphere, this short video is a valuable aid. I do not vote for the party that produced it, but the message is nonetheless important to understand (with thanks to ‘right writes’ in the comments).

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Two countries, half a world apart, but united by a common problem that will result in spiralling prices for goods, services and energy. The money making scam that has created a market for CO2, despite the fact that there is no proof CO2 is causing any change to climate, is starting to bite.

The next stage in the world’s CO2 emissions-trading scheme will begin in two years. Everyone agrees that the rulebook is complicated and that the costs for industry will be enormous. But nobody knows if the system will really help the environment — or merely create a burdensome bureaucracy.

The piece also includes some observations from its default left/green perspective about the transformation of CO2 into a new world currency – argued by many to be the objective of the big corporates and investors that would benefit from it at the expense of consumers.

Meanwhile, in Australia, The Australian reports criticism that the government’s:

… plan for cleaner power stations repeats mistakes made in the US, where a crackdown on emissions from new power stations has deterred investors from building them and led to greater use of coal-fired plants that are, on average, 44 years old.

They also complain that the plan is based on technologies that are highly uncertain and say it is probably doomed to fail in Western Australia.

Money, business, investment, regulation… Where in all this is the laser like focus on the environment that is supposed to arrest man’s alleged ruination of the climate? The masks always slip when the real drivers behind these schemes cannot be concealed behind green rhetoric.

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So says Jeff Rubin of Canada’s Globe and Mail. He’s right, it wasn’t. Rubin starts his piece by telling readers:

There are basically two ways to cut carbon emissions, and neither one of them involves global climate change summits like the one just held in Cancun, Mexico. The way I see it, you can either price carbon, or you can restrict growth.

Then ends his piece saying:

If the world is serious about tackling global climate change, we need to put a meaningful price ($50 to $60 U.S. per tonne) on carbon emissions now. If we don’t, our next choice is to forego economic growth.

One would have thought by now the scales would have fallen from Rubin’s eyes. But he is a true believer and so remains doggedly ignorant and uncomprehending of the real reason for the Cancun jamboree. Money.

Cancun, or COP16 as it was known, like COP15 at Copenhagen and other expensive and lengthy conferences before them, was not about ‘tackling global climate change’ or fighting the supposed evils of carbon dioxide. It was about agreeing the framework and the figures for redistributing money from industrialised nations to developing nations, so it can be spent on the technologies and solutions corporations are promoting that will reduce CO2 emissions by a tiny amount and, hey presto, combat climate change!

That is the reason why Cancun was no solution to global warming. No solution is actually necessary because man cannot stop a natural, cyclical phenomenon. Man can merely pretend he is the cause of changes to the climate and use it as an opportunity to cash in. Perhaps Rubin would understand more clearly if he followed the money.

“We’re talking about a [combined] reduction in emissions of 13-16%, and what this means is an increase of more than 4C.

“Responsibly, we cannot go along with this – this would mean we went along with a situation that my president has termed ‘ecocide and genocide’.”

These were the words reported by the BBC of Bolivian climate change conference delegate Pablo Solon. Do you notice the casual yet earnest way this man states as fact that CO2 emission reductions of 13-16% means global temperatures will rise more than 4C? It is not fact. It is a piece of guesswork based on flawed computer models that have failed to accurately project anything. The whole thing is about money.

Yet people who rely on the BBC and other mainstream media for their information, and are not aware of the significant body of scientific dissent from the supposed consensus, will accept such unsubstantiated comments as facts and as is intended, panic and press for a ‘solution’. This is what the climate change lobby, the pressure groups, the corporates and the governments want because they can then execute their political and financial – not environmental – plans. Plans such as the carbon trade and climate change fund that will leave ordinary people in the western world poorer, people in developing countries deceived and the corporates and their big business investors even richer than now.

The agreement in Cancun brings the UN’s plan to assume hegemonic control over the political structures of the world much closer. It takes another step towards the dismantling of democracy and places more power in the hands of the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in the supranational bodies that seek to control us. A global ruling elite is cementing its power in full view of a world of uncomprehending people who have been conned into believing this is being done for their own good.

And what of the environment? Around the globe climate will continue its natural cyclical changes, sometimes warming and sometimes cooling. Doomesday prophecies of catastrophing warming will not materialise. If anything the new cooling phase signalled by Joe Bastardi will destroy the credibility of the warmists, whose narrative will smoothly move on to ‘human overpopulation’ and ‘natural resources’ as the new justification for taking our money, undermining democracy and eroding our liberty. No wonder the BBC and its fellow inspid media parasites do all they can to keep inconvenient facts off the airwaves.

The redistribution of money from ordinary people to the big corporations, enforced by government legislation, will continue apace under the Cameron Coalition.

The Huskie-loving huckster has signalled his determination to ignore flawed and questionable arguments about mankind changing the climate and to press ahead with the enrichment of the parasite class and their corporate sponsors. The Guardian reports Cameron as saying the coalition’s ambition is to be the greenest government ever formed:

“I passionately believe that by recasting the argument for action on climate change away from the language of threats and punishments and into positive, profit-making terms, we can have a much wider impact,”

However, the profit making will be the preserve of the corporates with poor old Joe Public footing the bill. Cameron wants his fellow parasites to make the economic case for action and points out that the low-carbon market is worth up to £3.2 trillion and forecast to grow by 4% annually. This isn’t money going into our pockets – it is money being taken from them to fund the global climate change scam that will impoverish hundreds of millions of people while making members of the elite even more wealthy.

It has already been happening as shown in a Sunday Telegraph article today. But as usual with that Barclay Brothers comic, the ability to join the dots, spell out the true nature of the scam and make the direct connection all the way back to Cameron and the parasite class, is missing.

A fraud of unfathomably immense proportions is being committed against ordinary people. Taxpayers’ money continues to be poured into scientific ‘research’ departments that can be relied upon to produce the necessary predictions of catastophic climate change, which in turn spawn legislation and new forms of taxation, that in turn is channelled to the corporates to provide ‘zero carbon solutions’ that have zero effect on the climate because the changes are overwhelmingly driven by nature.

The media spins the given lines without question despite physical observation conflicting with the doomesday predictions. Meanwhile the destruction of natural resources and genuine pollution are ignored and continue to worsen because there is no profit in it for the corporates. This is without doubt the biggest scam in history and people are allowing it to happen because of a misplaced belief that all these ‘experts’ and ‘leaders’ couldn’t possibly hatch such a plot. For God’s sake people, wake up.

Whether directly or indirectly, the EU driven Renewables Obligation is going to cost business – and by extension all consumers – a huge amount of money. Badly thought out, unjustifiable and spawning any number of scams, this scheme will see certain corporations make a fortune from what amount to cap and trade, while others struggle to survive with the burden of additional costs.

The Renewables Obligation is a bureaucratic ‘solution’ to ‘climate change’ that will achieve precisely nothing in respect of the environment yet requires us to burn less fossil fuels and burn our money instead. The issue of costs arose in the House of Commons yesterday and the impact of this Brussels directive is starting to dawn on people:

Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what estimate he has made of the average cost to (a) small, (b) medium and (c) large manufacturing enterprises of obtaining 15 per cent. of their energy consumption from renewable sources. [21267]

Gregory Barker: The Secretary of State has published estimates of the average electricity bill impacts for medium-sized(1) non-domestic energy users of energy and climate change policies, including those policies necessary for reaching the 15% renewable energy target.

The introduction of Feed-in tariffs for small-scale electricity is estimated to increase average bills for this group by £24,000 in 2020 and extending the RO to meet the target is estimated to increase bills by £150,000 in 2020, a combined impact of 17% (source DECC (2010) “Estimated Impacts of Energy and Climate Change Police on Energy Prices and Bills”, available at:

These estimates do not take account of the potential offsetting impact from wholesale prices pushing down wholesale electricity prices, which previous modelling by Redpoint for DECC suggested could be of the order of £6/MWh on average over the period 2010-20. They also do not take account of other energy and climate change policy changes announced in the spending review 2010.

No separate assessment has been made of the bill impacts in the manufacturing sector, or of relating to small or large enterprises.

The spending review 2010 announced that the Renewable Heat Incentive would be funded through general taxation, so it will not impact on consumer gas bills.

(1) Size is defined here in terms of level of energy use.

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(Original story: EU Referendum) Christopher Booker of the Telegraph has persisted where other journalists could not be bothered to tread, and ensured a wider audience learns that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an untrustworthy and dishonest organisation.

The story by Booker tonight cements in the mainstream media the information presented by Dr Richard North, which exploded the denials, spin and manoeuvring of the IPCC. At the time of Booker going to press the IPCC has still failed to respond to the charge that it broke it own rules and should retract a false claim and apologise. Indeed, Booker’s piece will also result in red faces not only at the IPCC, but also at the politicised World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the BBC, the Guardian and the editorial board of the Sunday Times.

It turns out that one of the most widely publicised statements in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a claim on which tens of billions of dollars could hang – was not based on peer-reviewed science, as repeatedly claimed, but originated solely from anonymous propaganda published on the website of a small Brazilian environmental advocacy group.

That statement concerned the claim that “up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”. The IPCC’s own rules state that such non-peer-reviewed material should only be cited when it has been subjected to rigorous critical appraisal and that:

“each chapter team should review the quality and validity of each source before including results from the source into an IPCC report”.

It is self evident that this did not happen as North demonstrated last week. Not only that, but the original anonymous claim, for which there was no scientific basis, on the website of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) was embellished so it referred to the wider Amazon rainforest and not just the area within the territorial borders of Brazil. Why would such a thing happen? Well, as readers will be reminded, there is big, big money at stake with organisations such as the WWF anticipating a share of a vast carbon credit windfall, paid for by consumers and taxpayers.

This is a common theme in the realm of climate change. The science is only a means to achieving very profitable financial ends. But these vested interests benefit from the unwitting assistance of useful idiots such as George Monbiot and fellow travellers who was to see capitalism undermined and wealth redistributed.

We should be grateful for the likes of Christopher Booker. Having originally carried the news that the reference to the Amazon was not peer reviewed, the Sunday Times came under pressure to retract from those like Monbiot, for whom the story was inconvenient and unhelpful to their activism. The Sunday Times editorial board caved in and issued a retraction when what they should have done was redoubled their efforts to make the story water-tight by getting their journalists to research and dig for more details. It resulted in the mainstream media again being cowed into silence by those with something to hide. The days of fearless journalism seem all but over. It is a terrible indictment on the state of journalism today and the paucity of strong editorial management.

Now the Sunday Times retraction, as Booker points out, requires its own retraction to reflect reality. The efforts of North and Booker should be applauded. The outcome is delicious.

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The amount of ocean covered by Arctic Sea Ice has continued to increase, despite us having reached the time of the year when melting should have started. The Daily Mail reports today that this increase has ‘astonished climate scientists’.

Scientists from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado say that last month’s rise was part of yearly variations in ice cover and could not be taken as a sign that global warming is coming to an end. But that is one hell of a variation and it is in keeping with the recent trend of Arctic Sea Ice recovery over the last few years.

The question is, what does this increase in Arctic Sea Ice tell us? Anthony Watts of the excellent Watts Up With That? blog gave a very good explanation yesterday when he wrote:

It may be winds pushing ice further southwards in the Bering Sea, it may be fresh ice. It may be a combination. While this event isn’t by itself an about-face of the longer downward trend we’ve seen, it does seem to suggest that predictions assuming a linear (or even spiral) demise aren’t holding up.

That’s the bottom line. What this does is undermine the computer models upon which so many projections are made, and treated by some as fact. The models upon which governments are making policy that have huge economic implications for us are not performing. They are flawed.

Many years ago this planet experienced an ice age. Without mankind’s recent small contribution to nature’s emission of CO2, the planet started to warm. Most of the ice melted, glaciers receded, seas rose and permafrost reduced. What is to say the earth is not continuing that natural transformation now and mankind is not responsible for the warming seen in recent decades? What is to say we are not seeing the first signs of the Earth arresting that change and cooling again, as per its own natural cycle?

Climate scientists argue that it is the increased rate of change in recent decades that proves (without hard evidence) mankind is a causal factor in recent warming. But over the last year the increased rate of sea ice recovery has been put down to natural variation. So too has the bitter cold experienced from the UK to China. Climate Change scientists can’t have it both ways.

There is still too much we do not know or understand about our planet’s regulation of the climate to make ‘certain’ pronouncements. How can we be sure that the recent warming was not a natural variation? Over the next few years this question will have to be answered if Joe Bastardi’s forecast of a warmer summer is followed by his consistent prediction of a period of cooling – particularly if CO2 continues to rise.

There is no getting away from the observations over the last few years showing that despite an increase in CO2 concentration, the volume of sea ice in the Arctic has been recovering. Something is awry. Some parts of the globe continue to warm while many others are showing signs of cooling down. The models have been shown to be flawed. If you put incorrect information in you’re going to get incorrect information out.

Instead of doggedly sticking to a rigid, inflexible position on climate change and its causes, scientists should be exploring what is really going on and be prepared to reconsider what observation, rather than modelling, tells us. That after all is the role of science. It is not there to be used as a tool to steer political policy making.

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This blog has previously discussed the government’s money hoover that is the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) which was recently renamed as the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, that is due to come into force in April this year.

Many businesses will be adversely impacted financially, while the largest corporates that are already covered by the EU’s emission trading scheme that enables them to make money from CO2 emission trading, are exempt. Adding weight today to the argument of impending financial damage is accountancy giant KPMG, which is:

[…]warning finance directors that more than two-thirds of organisations will be hit with financial penalties following the introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC).

With just 20 days to go before the start of the CRC, the Big Four Firm is warning finance directors they risk severe financial penaltities and reputational damage, if their organisation fails to comply.

The Accountancy Age piece goes on to explain that KPMG believes the biggest risk to companies is incorrect reporting of their carbon emissions, from which they could incur substantial fines and severe reputational damage. This UK version of a carbon cap and trade scheme risks doing serious financial harm to businesses already struggling in difficult economic circumstances.

Regardless, the government is pressing ahead with what is a massive transformation that sees business incurring costs over and above the expense of what amounts to a carbon tax. I make no apology for repeating yet again that this economic vandalism is being carried out of the basis of a theory that hypothesises CO2 is causing global warming. There is only correlation, no evidence of causation. The net effect of this smash and grab raid on company bank accounts and the cost of compliance, reporting and administration is an increase in the cost of goods and services to the ordinary consumer in the street.

We have departed from an age of reason and logic and entered an age where a belief system, shown to be a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, holds sway. The real aim of this concerted effort is financial redistribution and an increase in the power and control of the state over its population. Some argue this is actually the embryonic development of a system of global governance, tied together with a common currency – carbon.

Regardless, the impact will be borne most by those who have least, and no one in the political class has any interest in scrutinising this disturbing activity or protecting the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. This is the state we’re in.

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The cover of Al Gore’s latest literary climate alarmist effort, ‘Our Choice’, is designed to give readers the impression that huge super-hurricanes would be a consequence of a continuing rise in carbon emissions. Unfortunately for Gore the latest research on hurricanes published in Nature Geoscience, debunks his unscientific assertions.

The published report concludes that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was merely part of a natural cycle, and that several similar increases have been recorded previously, each followed by a decline. As the Sunday Times reports:

“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.

He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore’s book as “misleading”.

Al Gore never lets the facts get in the way of a bit of lucrative climate alarmism. So it will be interesting to see whether this research will be ignored as Gore continues to scare people into ‘fighting’ climate change using methods that increase the number of dollars in his bank account. This is what happens when science is corrupted to suit the agenda of politicians and get rich quick scam artists. The science is not settled, the science is not robust. We only have opinions and theories advanced as fact.

What will also be interesting is the response, if any, from Kerry Emanuel, whose 2005 report in Nature magazine (basis of so many unsupported claims in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) is continually cited by Gore to support his claim that CO2 increase results in an increased number of more powerful storms. Will Emanuel take this like a scientist or try to defend his 2005 position as a given truth?

It’s official. The EU trading system got carbon emissions down. It’s one thing when renewable energy writers on blogs like this say cap and trade has transformed Europe.

We regularly cover the huge wind and solar industries created there – the results of Europe’s early adoption of the Kyoto Accord and subsequent EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and Europe’s resulting 13% greenhouse gas reduction. We have covered the indirect results before (like how the US now gets hand-me-down clean energy technology from Europe).

But now it’s official. Cap and trade in Europe is a success. Reuters said it.

Well, if Reuters said it then it must be true. You could knock me down with a gentle gust of CO2. No doubt the article was directed at ‘lawmakers’ in the United States, where President Obama’s vision of a cap and trade utopia is struggling to catch on as various Representatives question not only the potential economic impact, but also the basis of claims that man’s CO2 emissions are warming the planet.

No matter. The fact is in her excitement to say she was right all along and her desire to exhort this great news to the masses, Susan Kraemer has conveniently left out one crucial little factor in the reduction of carbon emissions. The recession.

As far back as nine months ago the New York Times, which has been desperately trying to argue that cap and trade works to support the Obama position, pointed to falling carbon emissions in the EU as proof. But even it was forced to concede that the overwhelming bulk of CO2 emission reduction was as a result of the recession. The NYT’s Green Inc. blog was somewhat more honest in its assessment of the reality. Growth has not exactly taken off since then.

What Susan Kraemer and her friends are not considering is what happens when European economies pick up and business activity results in more emissions. Factoring in economic recovery will result in a very different picture, which is why it has been carefully left out. This is the climate change equivalent of the old Soviet propaganda machine declaring tractor production being up, while people struggled to purchase the basics.

With the cap in place and some companies being rather more equal than others, only when the economies move up through the gears again will we see the real impacts on consumers of price increases as carbon credits increase in value or companies are forced into expensive re-engineering of their plant. What is certain it that we consumers will pick up the tab, and all for the sake of a theory.